Word: colombianization
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...moving directly into the trade. Using the profits--and yearly payoffs from the drug lords, which, according to McCaffery, run anywhere from $250 million to $600 million--the FARC and the ELN rebels have conquered nearly 40% of the country and inflicted one defeat after another on the Colombian government. "If we could cut off their drug financing, the activities of these groups would fall to 1% of what they are now," McCaffery says...
McCaffery's mission aimed to do just that. At the Tres Esquinas military base, the general visited U.S. military instructors who are training a battalion of Colombian police commandos in antidrug warfare--combat skills that the Colombians use to battle the rebels across the board. Under U.S. law the advisers are forbidden to join the Colombian police on raids, but already their presence has rattled the leftist rebels known as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). If the U.S. "intervenes further in Colombia," FARC leaders said last week, "its troops will go home dead or wounded...
...Colombia's top military officers. And U.S. planes, based in Florida, Colombia, Ecuador and Honduras, have flown more than 2,000 counter-drug missions. Many of those were reconnaissance flights similar to the one that crashed southeast of Bogota on July 21, killing its American crew and two Colombian officers. The efforts are backed by a $289 million annual aid package. (Colombia is the third largest recipient of U.S. largesse, behind Israel and Egypt...
...maddeningly for U.S. officials, Colombia's traffickers seem to be winning. According to McCaffery, 80% of the cocaine that reaches the U.S. and an increasing amount of heroin are produced in Colombia. Partly that is because of the success of U.S. aerial spraying in Bolivia and Peru. The Colombian traffickers, instead of shutting down their operations, began paying off farmers in the southeastern part of the country to begin wide-scale planting of coca and heroin. Data from U.S. satellites indicate "an explosion" of drug growth inside Colombia over the next couple of years, McCaffery says, and that means more...
...Manuel ("Sureshot") Marulanda--have pinned down successive governments for 38 years and made Washington wary of involvement. "We don't want to get into another Vietnam down there," says a senior Army officer assigned to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "Right now, there's no guarantee the Colombian government is going to win, and we don't want to back the losers--again." After McCaffery's visit, however, it was still tough to spot the winners...